By Curtis Ogden
Remember this old song? I don’t. But I heard Garnet Rogers doing a version the other day on WUMB. The timing was quite something, as I was in the car on my way to the office and my return from parental leave, trying to hold on to the reality of my situation. And it’s been on my mind as I get ready to embrace and ease into another transition (just remember, 40 is the new 30). Click here to listen to Guy Clark’s version.
When I was a young man my daddy told me
A lesson he learned, it was a long time ago
If you want to have someone to hold onto
You're gonna have to learn to let go
You got to sing like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody's watchin'
It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work
Now here is the one thing that I keep forgetting
When everything is falling apart
In life as in love, what I need to remember
There's such a thing as trying too hard
You got to sing like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody's watchin'
It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work
The words are simple, but their implications are profound. It seems so counter-intuitive to what may be a programmed survival instinct in our species, but letting go may be exactly where we need to go on many fronts. What about you, aspiring change agents? Anything you need to loosen your group on?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Democratized Creativity
By Melinda Weekes
“We have handed over the tools of creation.”
“We have democratized creativity to an extent that would have been unthinkable years ago.”
– James Boyle
Duke Law Professor and founder of Creative Commons, James Boyle, gives a talk at Google Zeitgeist 2008 on the subject of “Copyright and Openness”.
Boyle advocates that, given our penchant for closed, centralized, ways of handling content, we need re-wire ourselves towards open, decentralized forms and norms when dealing with creative content.
Gend Leonard takes this theoretical framework and makes it practical it in his talk, “Getting Attention 2.0”. Presented to the Scottish Audience Development Forum in October 2008, Leonard outlines several savvy tactics artists [and all content creators] can use to share their content for free, while cultivating big numbers of loyal listeners/followers....while still making money.
Artists And Audiences In A Connected World Gerd Leonhard Futurist
View more documents from Gerd Leonhard.
Viewing these presentations conjured in me a yearning for a past professional love: the fields of entertainment law and intellectual property. In fact, an urge overtook me that hadn’t felt in years: the urge to research case law. I found a recent copyright infringement suit brought by a training/consultant firm against some of its former trainers who had started their own training operation and had developed a training manual with content that is the subject of the suit. In a future post, I’ll break down the very interesting judicial analysis here and elsewhere that bring to bear directly on some of the issues we face as an organization, as creators, and as a sector, but for now, I ask:
- What are your fears as it relates to this push towards openness, opensource and creative common licenses?
- What do you think you (as an individual) or we (training orgs, NPOs) would actually be doing differently if copyright ownership, say, of our training materials, were not an issue in our work?
Im going out on a limb here to say that its my belief that I think our organizational perceptions of barriers we face (to product development, open source licensing, economic viability) exceed the reality. To sort this out, I’m motivated to put on my legal eagle hat in earnest to assess the gap been common perception and our business reality. In this way, your thoughts will provide me with a better sense of what we’re feeling, what we know, and what we want. I’ll use them as the starting points for my inquiry and adventure into an area of past (and just revived!) passion.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Prove of Improve?
By Curtis Ogden
Last week I had the privilege of co-delivering a workshop on collaboration and effective teams to this year’s crop of New Leaders for New Schools Residents as part of their Summer Foundations experience. These principals-to-be give one hope for the future of urban education in this country.
Prior to our two days of delivery, I heard Jeff Howard of the Efficacy Institute deliver a presentation to the Residents on the difference between what he called a “performance orientation” and a “learning orientation.” Howard’s claim is that schools often fail when they overemphasize student and staff performance at the expense of learning, and his message to the future school leaders was that they needed to think hard about what is most important as a long-term goal for the people in their building.
Among other things, shifting from a performance to a learning orientation means shifting from:
a focus on the outcome to a focus on the process to an outcome;
the belief that error indicates failure and limitation to seeing it as a valuable feedback mechanism for improvement;
seeing uncertainty as threatening to welcoming it as a challenge;
seeing the role of authority as that of judge to seeing it as one of being a guide.
Howard also suggests that a performance orientation can often be accompanied by the unfortunate tendency to see talent as given rather than ultimately developed.
I would dare say that it is not only our schools that suffer from an overemphasis on performance. Many organizations seem to fall victim (in practice) to the belief that leaders are born, success is purely predicated upon outcomes, and that tight control is the best way of operating. Not so surprising if this is the way we are being educated. What happens to learning and innovation under these conditions? If we are busy trying to prove ourselves, does this ultimately come at the expense of improving our communities and world?
Last week I had the privilege of co-delivering a workshop on collaboration and effective teams to this year’s crop of New Leaders for New Schools Residents as part of their Summer Foundations experience. These principals-to-be give one hope for the future of urban education in this country.
Prior to our two days of delivery, I heard Jeff Howard of the Efficacy Institute deliver a presentation to the Residents on the difference between what he called a “performance orientation” and a “learning orientation.” Howard’s claim is that schools often fail when they overemphasize student and staff performance at the expense of learning, and his message to the future school leaders was that they needed to think hard about what is most important as a long-term goal for the people in their building.
Among other things, shifting from a performance to a learning orientation means shifting from:
a focus on the outcome to a focus on the process to an outcome;
the belief that error indicates failure and limitation to seeing it as a valuable feedback mechanism for improvement;
seeing uncertainty as threatening to welcoming it as a challenge;
seeing the role of authority as that of judge to seeing it as one of being a guide.
Howard also suggests that a performance orientation can often be accompanied by the unfortunate tendency to see talent as given rather than ultimately developed.
I would dare say that it is not only our schools that suffer from an overemphasis on performance. Many organizations seem to fall victim (in practice) to the belief that leaders are born, success is purely predicated upon outcomes, and that tight control is the best way of operating. Not so surprising if this is the way we are being educated. What happens to learning and innovation under these conditions? If we are busy trying to prove ourselves, does this ultimately come at the expense of improving our communities and world?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Mind Over Laundry
By Curtis Ogden
In her analysis of leverage points to intervene in a system, the late Donella Meadows highlighted mindsets as one of the most fundamental levels on which to focus if one is hoping to make deep and long-lasting change. The case for this is well made in a recent article in Mass Audubon’s Sanctuary Magazine.
Katherine Scott writes in “The Wind in the Wash” about the lost art of the clothesline in America, largely obscured by the now ubiquitous clothes dryer. In this day and age, notes Scott, many children haven’t the remotest idea of what a clothespin is. She is not simply waxing nostalgic, but making an important point about the way we think.
Today clothes dryers can account for upwards of a third of household energy use in the United States, and are therefore significant producers of carbon emissions. Scott remarks that in many other countries around the world, air drying is the more common practice. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, some 90% of households air out their laundry. This is not a matter of whether one lives in warm weather or not; clothes dry effectively in cold weather, as is attested to by year round air drying around Europe.
While technology is advancing to make more efficient clothes dryers, nothing holds a candle to air drying. It’s cheaper (no purchasing or maintenance costs for a machine), less toxic (no exposure to synthetic softeners), easier on clothes, and safer (no risk of fire through the ignition of lint). So what’s up? Turns out that throughout the US, there are numerous community ordinances that prohibit the outdoor hanging of clothes. Doing so is in some cases viewed as “a flag of poverty” that lowers real estate values. So clearly there is something in the way we think that keeps us dependent upon our dryers. While some might point to the issue of convenience, it seems that this too is rooted in our perceptions, in our mindsets about how much we have to do, how productive we have to be, and what one may or may not derive from a practice as mundane or perhaps sublime as ceremoniously hanging garments to blow in the wind.
Check out some hopeful developments on this front in Vermont . . .
In her analysis of leverage points to intervene in a system, the late Donella Meadows highlighted mindsets as one of the most fundamental levels on which to focus if one is hoping to make deep and long-lasting change. The case for this is well made in a recent article in Mass Audubon’s Sanctuary Magazine.
Katherine Scott writes in “The Wind in the Wash” about the lost art of the clothesline in America, largely obscured by the now ubiquitous clothes dryer. In this day and age, notes Scott, many children haven’t the remotest idea of what a clothespin is. She is not simply waxing nostalgic, but making an important point about the way we think.
Today clothes dryers can account for upwards of a third of household energy use in the United States, and are therefore significant producers of carbon emissions. Scott remarks that in many other countries around the world, air drying is the more common practice. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, some 90% of households air out their laundry. This is not a matter of whether one lives in warm weather or not; clothes dry effectively in cold weather, as is attested to by year round air drying around Europe.
While technology is advancing to make more efficient clothes dryers, nothing holds a candle to air drying. It’s cheaper (no purchasing or maintenance costs for a machine), less toxic (no exposure to synthetic softeners), easier on clothes, and safer (no risk of fire through the ignition of lint). So what’s up? Turns out that throughout the US, there are numerous community ordinances that prohibit the outdoor hanging of clothes. Doing so is in some cases viewed as “a flag of poverty” that lowers real estate values. So clearly there is something in the way we think that keeps us dependent upon our dryers. While some might point to the issue of convenience, it seems that this too is rooted in our perceptions, in our mindsets about how much we have to do, how productive we have to be, and what one may or may not derive from a practice as mundane or perhaps sublime as ceremoniously hanging garments to blow in the wind.
Check out some hopeful developments on this front in Vermont . . .
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
This I Believe
By Curtis Ogden
In the 1950s journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted a radio program called This I Believe, in which he invited people from all walks of life to share their personal philosophies. Fifty years later, Dan Gediman revived the show on National Public Radio with the goal of “encouraging people to begin the . . . difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.” The result has been a growing movement of communities and schools jumping at the opportunity to invite citizens and students to articulate their core beliefs and values, and to align their lives accordingly. For a taste (actually a glimpse and/or listen), check out this link.
In the second published book of collected personal philosophies, This I Believe II. Gedimen includes an invitation to and guidelines for those who care to try their hand at articulating what they fundamentally believe, stating that the “transformative” benefits are not always readily apparent until doing so. I find his guidance for essay writing to be particularly helpful, touching on ways that we (or perhaps I should say “I”) might more powerfully express myself and connect with others in the process:
Tell a story: Be specific. Take your belief out of the ether and ground it in the events of your life. Consider moments when belief was formed or tested or changed. Think of your own experience, work, and family, and tell of the things you know that no one else does.
Be brief: Your statement should be between 350 and 500 words. The shorter length forces you to focus on the belief that is central to your life.
Be affirmative: Say what you do believe, not what you don't believe. Avoid speaking in the editorial "we." Make your essay about you; speak in the first person. Avoid preaching or editorializing.
Be personal: Write in words and phrases that are comfortable for you to speak. Read your essay aloud to yourself several times, and each time edit it and simplify it until you find the words, tone, and story that truly echo your belief and the way you speak.
Seems to me that these are great guidelines for our work helping groups and organizations discover and express their core identity, define their higher purpose, and collectively live out their values. And you?
In the 1950s journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted a radio program called This I Believe, in which he invited people from all walks of life to share their personal philosophies. Fifty years later, Dan Gediman revived the show on National Public Radio with the goal of “encouraging people to begin the . . . difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.” The result has been a growing movement of communities and schools jumping at the opportunity to invite citizens and students to articulate their core beliefs and values, and to align their lives accordingly. For a taste (actually a glimpse and/or listen), check out this link.
In the second published book of collected personal philosophies, This I Believe II. Gedimen includes an invitation to and guidelines for those who care to try their hand at articulating what they fundamentally believe, stating that the “transformative” benefits are not always readily apparent until doing so. I find his guidance for essay writing to be particularly helpful, touching on ways that we (or perhaps I should say “I”) might more powerfully express myself and connect with others in the process:
Tell a story: Be specific. Take your belief out of the ether and ground it in the events of your life. Consider moments when belief was formed or tested or changed. Think of your own experience, work, and family, and tell of the things you know that no one else does.
Be brief: Your statement should be between 350 and 500 words. The shorter length forces you to focus on the belief that is central to your life.
Be affirmative: Say what you do believe, not what you don't believe. Avoid speaking in the editorial "we." Make your essay about you; speak in the first person. Avoid preaching or editorializing.
Be personal: Write in words and phrases that are comfortable for you to speak. Read your essay aloud to yourself several times, and each time edit it and simplify it until you find the words, tone, and story that truly echo your belief and the way you speak.
Seems to me that these are great guidelines for our work helping groups and organizations discover and express their core identity, define their higher purpose, and collectively live out their values. And you?
Friday, June 19, 2009
Our Bodies Carry Our History With Us
By Melinda Weekes
One of the benefits Ive experienced in our social change work as process experts and professional facilitators, is the exposure we get to have in various fields of social change work. Since last October, my colleague Andrea and I have had the pleasure of consulting with an amazing collaborative of stakeholders, the Springfield Health Equity Initiative, who have determined to build a plan to reduce the incidence of diabetes in the black and brown neighborhoods in the city of Springfield, MA. Even more boldly, these dedicated and thoughtful leaders have also chosen to take up an analysis for their work that incorporates how systemic, government sanctioned, racial discrimination has played a direct role in creating the egregious disparities in health outcomes we see today among black and brown folk in the U.S., and regardless of class.
I have learned so much. About diabetes. About social determinants of health. About the inextricable link between personal wealth and personal health. Its made me, personally, look with more intentionality to my own family history, health maintenance, and sadly, about how it is that I too carry in my own mind, body and spirit the affects of stress, strain, pain and struggle that is due to reacting to and surviving though racism, racist practices and its ugly remnants. Whats bad is that I dont know what its like to not live in this reality. What's worse is that while I am conscious of occasions and senarious that make for my racism-stress, there is that which does not even register with my head or heart, yet still takes up residence in my body in some way, shape or form. Such reflection has made for a poignant and sobering personal subtext to the inspiring and pioneering work of the fine and committed souls we've met who refuse to relent to daunting statistics and blatant injustices that plague their -- our -- families, neighbors, children, and communities. And, of course, there is also the context of the national political conversation around finally get universal health care, and the recent activity in our own state that jeopardizes healthcare coverage for low-income legal immigrants.
In graduate school, I took a class, Vocal Performance for the Stage, with a dynamo of an instructor, who also taught us that our bodies really do store every single emotion and psychological bruise of our past. I recalled how amazed I was at that idea when I heard the similar statement made by one of the expert in this video: "Our bodies carry our history with us". She was making the same point my instructor was making in voice class,, but emphasizing the social-histories we also carry within us.
Sure, I've made goals with Fall-due dates designed to help me stave off the hypertension that runs in my family (D.A.S.H. diet, lose 10 lbs., exercise 3x week). But Im wondering, for all of us: whats the anecdote for unwanted history that somehow resides in our bodies? Do answers about history lie in the notion of power of re-story, and narrative...re- incarnating?. I think of the violence perpetrated upon black bodies through slavery. I think of the dehumanizing body images and stereotypes perpetuated about black folk ever since.
So, I ask, in the context of considering processes for social transformation, while we often engage in processes to re-imagine and re-vision the future, what might be the healing, revolutionary, psycho-social justice work of re-membering our bodies? Of deconstructing or defeating past hurts, injustices, infractions...if that is even possible?
I know....a blog isnt supposed to be this deep.
But then again, the work of social transformation wouldnt have to be so deeply messy if the injustices we seek to transform and transcend were not themselves so vile, unpleasant, de-humanizing, perverted.
What do you think? How best do you perform your body work? Your body work related to social justice? Your body work related to undoing racism? What does/might it entail? How do you assess what parts need tending? What is the mind-body-spirit connection strategy that is directly targeted to combat injustice? Is this work for all, or just work for some?
One of the benefits Ive experienced in our social change work as process experts and professional facilitators, is the exposure we get to have in various fields of social change work. Since last October, my colleague Andrea and I have had the pleasure of consulting with an amazing collaborative of stakeholders, the Springfield Health Equity Initiative, who have determined to build a plan to reduce the incidence of diabetes in the black and brown neighborhoods in the city of Springfield, MA. Even more boldly, these dedicated and thoughtful leaders have also chosen to take up an analysis for their work that incorporates how systemic, government sanctioned, racial discrimination has played a direct role in creating the egregious disparities in health outcomes we see today among black and brown folk in the U.S., and regardless of class.
I have learned so much. About diabetes. About social determinants of health. About the inextricable link between personal wealth and personal health. Its made me, personally, look with more intentionality to my own family history, health maintenance, and sadly, about how it is that I too carry in my own mind, body and spirit the affects of stress, strain, pain and struggle that is due to reacting to and surviving though racism, racist practices and its ugly remnants. Whats bad is that I dont know what its like to not live in this reality. What's worse is that while I am conscious of occasions and senarious that make for my racism-stress, there is that which does not even register with my head or heart, yet still takes up residence in my body in some way, shape or form. Such reflection has made for a poignant and sobering personal subtext to the inspiring and pioneering work of the fine and committed souls we've met who refuse to relent to daunting statistics and blatant injustices that plague their -- our -- families, neighbors, children, and communities. And, of course, there is also the context of the national political conversation around finally get universal health care, and the recent activity in our own state that jeopardizes healthcare coverage for low-income legal immigrants.
In graduate school, I took a class, Vocal Performance for the Stage, with a dynamo of an instructor, who also taught us that our bodies really do store every single emotion and psychological bruise of our past. I recalled how amazed I was at that idea when I heard the similar statement made by one of the expert in this video: "Our bodies carry our history with us". She was making the same point my instructor was making in voice class,, but emphasizing the social-histories we also carry within us.
Sure, I've made goals with Fall-due dates designed to help me stave off the hypertension that runs in my family (D.A.S.H. diet, lose 10 lbs., exercise 3x week). But Im wondering, for all of us: whats the anecdote for unwanted history that somehow resides in our bodies? Do answers about history lie in the notion of power of re-story, and narrative...re- incarnating?. I think of the violence perpetrated upon black bodies through slavery. I think of the dehumanizing body images and stereotypes perpetuated about black folk ever since.
So, I ask, in the context of considering processes for social transformation, while we often engage in processes to re-imagine and re-vision the future, what might be the healing, revolutionary, psycho-social justice work of re-membering our bodies? Of deconstructing or defeating past hurts, injustices, infractions...if that is even possible?
I know....a blog isnt supposed to be this deep.
But then again, the work of social transformation wouldnt have to be so deeply messy if the injustices we seek to transform and transcend were not themselves so vile, unpleasant, de-humanizing, perverted.
What do you think? How best do you perform your body work? Your body work related to social justice? Your body work related to undoing racism? What does/might it entail? How do you assess what parts need tending? What is the mind-body-spirit connection strategy that is directly targeted to combat injustice? Is this work for all, or just work for some?
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Daddy's Back
By Curtis Ogden
Next week I return to work after three blissful weeks of parental leave. Well, perhaps I should say three very full weeks (I’m not sure that nights with little sleep and days filled with constantly changing diapers constitute bliss). I am forever grateful to the Interaction Institute for Social Change for having such a humane parental leave policy, for a father no less. This is certainly not the standard in this country.
The flip side of my gratitude is the sadness that comes from needing to leave my two infant girls, and to leave my wife with her hands full. It is certainly much more than a full time job to raise three children, and considerably more to do it well. And I am sad to think of all the parents in this country who do not have anything approaching the kind of benefit we have at IISC, and hopeful that efforts to enact some kind of federal legislation will be successful.
In recent interviews with candidates to be a “mother’s helper” to support my wife Emily once I am back at work, we talked with a Brazilian woman who looked at Em mid-way through our conversation and said, “You American women are my heroes. You try to do everything. It’s too much.” That said a lot. We certainly seem to value productivity in this country, at times at the expense of our own health and that of our children. Often during conversations I’ve had with people of retirement age (meaning my parents’ generation) they will comment that they cannot imagine trying to raise kids in this day and age - it’s too expensive, the expectations are too high, we know/think too much about what could possibly go wrong. Above all, there is a common sentiment that there just seems to be less regard for the job of parenting. About this I feel the greatest sadness of all, and a resolve to do what I can to shift things.
As I get ready to get back in the saddle, I know I will be a different man when I return, a parent for the second (and third) time, and someone who now more than ever knows that the priority for me is family. And so I am committed to carrying the spirits of my little girls with me, to guide me in the work that needs to be done and that supports my family in the fullest way. And I am eager to hear suggestions and reactions from others about how to strike the balance. What is the connection between our efforts to make social change and a parent/child/family (however that might be defined)-supportive culture?
Next week I return to work after three blissful weeks of parental leave. Well, perhaps I should say three very full weeks (I’m not sure that nights with little sleep and days filled with constantly changing diapers constitute bliss). I am forever grateful to the Interaction Institute for Social Change for having such a humane parental leave policy, for a father no less. This is certainly not the standard in this country.
The flip side of my gratitude is the sadness that comes from needing to leave my two infant girls, and to leave my wife with her hands full. It is certainly much more than a full time job to raise three children, and considerably more to do it well. And I am sad to think of all the parents in this country who do not have anything approaching the kind of benefit we have at IISC, and hopeful that efforts to enact some kind of federal legislation will be successful.
In recent interviews with candidates to be a “mother’s helper” to support my wife Emily once I am back at work, we talked with a Brazilian woman who looked at Em mid-way through our conversation and said, “You American women are my heroes. You try to do everything. It’s too much.” That said a lot. We certainly seem to value productivity in this country, at times at the expense of our own health and that of our children. Often during conversations I’ve had with people of retirement age (meaning my parents’ generation) they will comment that they cannot imagine trying to raise kids in this day and age - it’s too expensive, the expectations are too high, we know/think too much about what could possibly go wrong. Above all, there is a common sentiment that there just seems to be less regard for the job of parenting. About this I feel the greatest sadness of all, and a resolve to do what I can to shift things.
As I get ready to get back in the saddle, I know I will be a different man when I return, a parent for the second (and third) time, and someone who now more than ever knows that the priority for me is family. And so I am committed to carrying the spirits of my little girls with me, to guide me in the work that needs to be done and that supports my family in the fullest way. And I am eager to hear suggestions and reactions from others about how to strike the balance. What is the connection between our efforts to make social change and a parent/child/family (however that might be defined)-supportive culture?
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